Bob and Tim were called to a heat pump problem where the homeowner said the unit was icing up in her basement. When they arrived, the housewife met them at the door and took them down to the basement and said, “This is not normal. I have never seen ice down here on these lines before.”

In this troubleshooting situation you are dealing with equipment that has only been in operation for two months. And during that time frame, the customer has complained that at times the box temperature is higher than it should be, but the unit then seems to recover and freeze OK.

Bob and Tim were on their first service call of the winter season. A customer wanted them to perform service on their furnace to make sure that the unit was in good working order for the winter. 

The sweat gleams across his forehead as he steps out into the sauna-like air. With tools in hand, he begins walking toward his objective, providing the greatest of summer relief, air conditioning.

Bob and Tim were on a job where one of the other technicians had been having a hard time with a persistent leak. He thought the leak was somewhere in the indoor unit, but he could not pinpoint it.

Your role in this troubleshooting situation is a follow-up to visits by other technicians who responded to this customer’s complaint about the cost of operating their heat pump in the winter. Opinions offered so far range from a possibly failing reversing valve to improper use by the customer.

Bob and Tim were on their way to the shop on a hot Friday afternoon when Bob got a call on his cell phone from his wife who said, “The air conditioner is not working and my mom and dad are coming from out of town tonight. What are we going to do?”

Every year The Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Co. (HSB) investigates numerous small refrigeration unit failures. The primary reason for the majority of these failures is poor or non-existent preventive maintenance for the unit.

Bob and Tim were at a retail store where the manager had called and said there was no cooling. The system was a 5-ton heat pump. After talking to the manager, Bob and Tim turned the thermostat to the “fan on” position to see if there was power to the unit and the indoor fan started. The heat pump was a split system, so they went up to the roof.

In this month’s troubleshooting situation your customer is requesting a second opinion on a proposed repair to their air-source heat pump. The homeowner originally called for service when they noticed that the house wasn’t cooling down as they would like.